How Newt may be able to get some Florida delegates, even if Mitt wins

[highplainsdem]

The common wisdom is that Florida is WTA, winner take all, but that doesn't HAVE to stay the case this year, according to the Rachel Maddow show last night, and articles yesterday:

From the transcript of Rachel's show:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46204854/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#.TygUcoGOCPY

So, Florida broke both of those rules, but ultimately, they`ve decided
just to blow off that last one. They decided they`d been punished enough
by losing half their delegates and they`re going to award their delegates,
winner-take-all no matter what the Republican Party said about that big
dumb rule that they broke.

That`s why everybody`s been saying that Florida is winner-take-all.
They are planning on that. They would like it to be so.

However, there are rules and as reported in "Tampa Bay Times" and
elsewhere, nobody really knows how Florida is going to allot its delegates
in the end. Quote, "All it takes is a registered Florida Republican to
file a protest with the RNC and the party`s contest committee would have to
consider the issue when it meets in August just before the convention."

So, bottom line: Florida wants to be winner-take-all in terms of its
delegates. They want to be seen that way. They want you to say that about
them. They`re sort of not supposed to be able to say that. And it maybe
won`t be decided until August how Florida allocates its delegates.

From yesteday's National Journal:

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/289680/floridas-gop-primary-winner-take-all-now

So the winner on Tuesday gets all of Florida’s 50 delegates to the GOP convention, right? It says so right in the Republican Florida of Party primary rules.

Eh… probably. You see, the Republican National Committee wanted the primary season to start later (that didn’t work out so well) and they wanted the early states to award their delegates proportionally. But those rules came about under Chairman Michael Steele; by the time Florida set its date, Reince Priebus was running the show, and the RNC approved the current winner-takes-all system. The Florida GOP says it’s a non-issue; the current RNC leadership has signed off on the winner-take-all system.

The Tampa Bay Times Adam Smith reports, “All it takes is a registered Florida Republican to file a protest with the RNC, and the party’s contest committee would have to consider the issue when it meets in August just before the convention.”

-snip-

In other words, Newt Gingrich may have enormous incentive to file protests and perhaps even legal challenges to the RNC to make Florida allocate its delegates proportionally.

The Tampa Bay Times article both are referring to:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/if-gop-fight-drags-on-so-could-argument-over-floridas-delegates/1212342

That's not guaranteed, however. All it takes is a registered Florida Republican to file a protest with the RNC, and the party's contest committee would have to consider the issue when it meets in August just before the convention.

"August is going to be a very tense month for those of us on the committee on contests. We could be the group that everybody loves or everybody hates," said Fredi Simpson, an RNC member from Washington state who sits on that committee and also helped write the rules.

Like other RNC members, Simpson thinks the rules clearly bar Florida from being winner-take-all. At an RNC meeting in August, members of the Presidential Nominating and Selection Committee passed a resolution calling for the RNC to enforce its rules for proportional delegates on states like Florida that set primaries earlier than April.

"Florida ought to be proportional, and it is up to the RNC legal office to figure out how they do that. That was absolutely the intention when we wrote that rule," said Pete Ricketts, an RNC member from Nebraska who served on the RNC committee appointed in 2008 to draw up delegate selection rules for 2012.

[rocktivity]

1. So there IS a good reason to root for the smallest margin of victory tonight

Go NEWT!


rocktivity

[highplainsdem]

5. Yes. We want Newt to stay in this as long as possible and damage Mittens as much as possible.

[WI_DEM]

2. given how the establishment reps want Mittens it's doubtful Newt

would win his protest.

[patrice]

3. "Let's make a deal!" Coastal skyscraper developers interviewing registered Florida Republicans for

protest filing skills . . . ?

Wouldn't be the first time derivative-troubled vertical real estate (in Florida or elsewhere, say, NYC perhaps?) was sitting in the catbird seat in a Florida election, I'd bet.

But then, perhaps Newt will fly them all off to the moon before the Sea takes that expensive beach front real estate.

They are, after all, THE King-makers, always have been and always will be wherever they go.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. I was wondering

why the media wasn't focussing on the fact that Florida jumped ahead and that usually having consequences at the convention. Almost all of them seemed to have blown this off where in 2008, the Florida and Michigan jumps were major news.

Not that I think that the reasoning behind the jump was wrong but that given the number of delegates at stake and the prior history, it's interesting why this wasn't brought up at the beginning of the primary process... Of course maybe because it's primarily a repuke primary/caucus season and the current clown show is bad enough....